Cartoon showing baby representing New Year 1905 chasing old man 1904 into history. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

All the best to everyone in the New Year!

As is a ‘new’ tradition (new to me since 2012), apparently January is Selfish Knitting Month.  I did follow through on that last year, although it was very difficult to NOT give away the knitting 🙂  I have yarn & pattern selected for my ‘gift’ this month, however…

I have not finished the IOU gift yet.  For the 2nd year in a row, my brother takes one for the team, and is left with no gift but instead was given a bag with balls of yarn & a pattern for socks within it.  I’ve finished ONE sock so far, but life (read: novice hockey tournament) got in the way, and I’ve only just cast on the 2nd sock….

Yes, I can whip up a pair of lovely socks in a weekend (like the socks I finished in 2 days for my husband this year – finished by 11pm Christmas Eve).  But, these socks, are Socks for Soldiers, with specific instructions and 12 inch long legs….I might as well have knit my brother his kilt socks (which are still owing to him by the way)…

I will finish the socks by the weekend, then will cast-on my personal, selfish project….

In the meantime, I have already figured out 2 of next years knitmas gifts…and once I finish my selfish knitting…I’ll start early on 2013 knitmas and avoid the IOU gifts…. (famous last words…)

How about you? Did you finish all the knitmas/handmade gifts you had originally planned?

Holiday break (Photo credit: César Poyatos)

Holiday knitting is in full-swing: I have tons of projects on the needles, yarn strewn about the attic…

I will actually ramp up even further when the panic realization strikes that I don’t have enough ‘free time’ to knit all the projects I have planned, let alone bake goodies, go shopping and prepare for the holidays…

So, to release any tension associated with the holiday knitting crunch, I hunted down the holiday tv specials:

Canadian Schedules:
CBC – http://www.cbc.ca/holiday/schedule.html
CTV – http://www.ctv.ca/2012HolidayProgrammingGuide/Schedule.aspx
YTV – not published yet

US Networks:
http://www.jsonline.com/entertainment/tvradio/2012-holiday-tv-schedule-t47j74i-180227721.html

I enjoy knitting in front of my holiday favs…

I’ve been sick the last week, so didn’t get much further on the weaving, so no photos of progress to date 🙂 However, the weaving is coming along.  I wasn’t happy with my selvedge edges so Google’d “weaving selvedges” and had some links come up referring to “Temples”.  After I checked a few sites out, ran across one that made their own, which led me to others (read: I was lost down the rabbit hole)…

…much later I was trying out a binder clip with yarn & a washer tied to it to hold the edges taught…worked like a charm!

I have a lovely used LeClerc table loom, purchased through usedvictoria.com about two years ago.  The woman I bought it from had never really touched it – told me the previous owner set it up for her, and started her with a couple of inches of weaving.

For the last two years, that is how the loom sat in my attic/craft room.  Periodically I would go up there and throw the shuttle back & forth a few times; my son would take a couple of tries; I’d read the “Learning to Weave” book and try a couple of things. I took the practice warp off, but couldn’t figure out a way to put one back on without a warping board.

This past spring, I sent photos of various warpboard “how-to’s” to my brother, and voila, had a warping board…it just took me 3+ months to actually use it… but that’s not as bad as the fact it has taken me two years to warp my own loom!!

I’m following the book’s instructions to do a sample piece, so I’m using sock yarn, hoping I can get a washable placemat for the lil guy to use at school.

Instructions called for 2 colours of 60 ends each, so I managed to use the warp board twice in one day!!!

I didn’t have a sley hook for sleying the reed, but instead used a plastic stitch marker from my knitting kit it took me a good couple of hours to do this with 120 threads into teeny tiny spaces (Note to self: need to buy a sley hook)

Threading the heddle was just as tiresome (120 threads through moving targets) & I could not get comfortable (Note to self: bring kitchen stool upstairs next time!)

After a few inches of weaving, I’m thinking using this practice piece as a lunch placemat might embarrass the 7yr old, maybe it’ll be a timeout or blackmail mat instead…

As soon as I read today’s About.com/Knitting article, I exclaimed “BRILLIANT”!

My favourite cast-on technique is the long-tail cast-on, but, as any knitter can attest, if you don’t estimate your yardage correctly, you inevitably end up miscalculating and every so often have a too short tail and have to rip back and redo the caston to get the number of stitches you need…casting on 80 stitches on teeny tiny double point needles for socks, this can be rather frustrating.

So later today, I’m trying the long-tail with 2 strands (guess that means I need to cast on a pair of socks) 🙂

(Photo credit: paparutzi)

I love Christmas.  I have been known to sing Jingle Bells year round.  My husband refers to me as a HOLIDORK. People complain “its too early to think about Christmas…But me, I think of old traditions, handmade gifts, people being consciously friendly for the season (when I really wish people would be consciously friendly year-round).

It also helped that I used to do craft shows and needed to have my Christmas items ready before August for judging and build up my inventory before the fall shows started!

For many years, I have a little competition with myself as to how many gifts I can make each year vs how little I buy.  I also build up a small inventory of knitted items for my son’s school “Children’s Craft Sale”.  On Ravelry there’s a group that shares the trials & tribulations of gift knitting: Some preplan a year in advance, while others leave it to the last minute to knit into the wee hours of Christmas morning…I’ve done both

I’m quite sure my sister-in-law will be ‘peeking’ but here’s a sampling of what I’ll be working on this fall:

1) The Hitchiker Scarf – This is great in a self-striping or variegated sock yarn to display more prominently than as socks on the feet!

2) The Bandana Cowl – Bulky yarn, quick knits are a must for holiday knitting!!! Plus, I may just knit this for myself..

3) The Baktus Scarf – do you sense a theme here??

4)  iPhone Sock – quick knit, leftover yarn, most people own one of these things, perfect for the school craft sale!

5) Dobby Booksock – what avid young reader wouldn’t know what this is?? Again, quick knit, leftover yarn 🙂

I’ll share more later…happy knitting!

Image via CrunchBase

As of May 24th, 2012, the #yyjstitchers met as a group at the lovely Cabin 12.  We setup a Meetup group , notified knitters on Twitter (the reason for the #), as well as posting on Ravelry forums for Vancouver Island Fibre Lovers.

I’d like to say we are a non-denominational fibre loving group – we aren’t just knitters, we have crocheters in the mix…something I have found lacking in many Stitch N Bitch groups in the area (might not be in other cities, but I find so few crocheters out to the groups).  Matter of fact, we even had 2 people drop spindling at our July meetup!

Some of the people came from Ravelry, some from Twitter, some through Meetup, and others from word of mouth…we are a community from various sources as well (again, the nondenominational theme).  We are now up to 64 Meetup members, and average 17 ‘stitchers’ attending our monthly meetups.

We are now increasing the frequency of our meetings 🙂  The lovely people at Cabin12 have agreed to let us take over the world knit/crochet/spin peacefully in their lounge on the 2nd and 4th Thursday of each month at Cabin 12.  They have been great hosts for us and we not only get to take over a comfy space with couches, chairs, coffee tables, we also are ‘yarnbombing‘ the place 😉

Hope to see you there!

The Ravellenic 2012 Games are nearly upon us! 

From what *I* remember, this “knitting olympics” originally started as a winter only event in 2006 by YarnHarlot.  After Ravelry was born, they ran the Summer games in 2008, and again for winter 2010.

Personally, I’ve only participated in the 2010 Ravelympics (that WAS its name then – not any longer due to a nasty letter about us knitters denigrating the games…when in reality a nice ‘please note Olympics is trademarked and you are infringing, please change your name’ would have been fine). 
But I digress…

There are various teams, but again for 2012, I’ll be competing with Team Canada.  It was great to share & chat online with fellow hockey fans ;), while we knitted & cheered.  This year Team Camada outdid themselves with compiling a list of Canadian Designers AND Canadian Yarns if you really want to challenge yourself.  We’re also trying to have groups of knitters meet for the MASS CAST ON & post photos of their cities to share with other Team Canada Knitters.  We’ll be knitting at Cabin 12, 1pm Pacific time 🙂

Not on Ravelry?  Get yourself signed up – knitters, crocheters, weavers, spinners ALL have events.  Info is here if you have a sign in, otherwise here’s a brief overview (get yourself signed up & Join Team Canada).

The Basic RULES